In addition to presenting the rich histories and compelling narratives of contemporary Black American mathematicians, the films showcase innovative educational programs in mathematics for African American students at every level, from grade school to university to postdoctoral research. The historical characters and their stories are interwoven to support themes identified in the lives and experiences of the students and aspiring mathematicians followed in various institutional settings as they explore the field and consider future careers in mathematics.
Sharing a wide range of individual choices, the films adhere to the proposition that a passion for mathematics and its pursuit can by itself produce positive social change and lead to a satisfying and meaningful life.
Showing the stories and accomplishments of historical African American mathematicians is an opportunity to present the lives and work of many exceptional figures who have until now been largely unknown not only to the wider public but also to African Americans.
Evelyn Boyd Granville (1924–2023) was the second African American woman to receive a PhD in mathematics from an American university, which she earned in 1949 from Yale University (she attended Smith College before Yale). She performed pioneering work in the field of computing.
Talithia D. Williams is an American statistician and mathematician at Harvey Mudd College, where she was the first Black woman to achieve tenure at the school. Williams is an advocate for engaging more African Americans in the sciences and has hosted several series on NOVA.
Journeys of Black Mathematicians examines some of the history that has prevented African Americans from the pursuit of studies and careers in science and mathematics. Black mathematicians have continued to face barriers in a world that is only now grudgingly coming to terms with a legacy of inequality and prejudice. The stories of our characters offer a wide range of examples.
The National Association of Mathematicians (NAM) was created in 1969 as a base through which Black mathematicians could have their voices heard at the large professional organizations in their field. Johnny L. Houston, one of the founders, explains the genesis of the organization. Monica Stephens Cooley describes the dilemmas faced by Black women with PhDs in math. Nathaniel Whitaker, a dean at UMass Amherst, inveighs against the notion that mathematics is only for the select few. Suzanne L. Weekes, CEO of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), presents a powerful argument for making mathematics more inclusive. Aris Winger, Akil L. Parker, and Robin Wilson reinforce the idea that increasing the mathematics proficiency of the African American community is a social justice issue. In a perfect example, Howard University professor Tepper Gill explains that the greatest value of education is that once you have it, no one can take it from you.
Several of the mathematicians in the film are either products of or did their work in training future mathematicians at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), such as Spelman, Morehouse, and Howard. Documenting the role of the 105 historically Black colleges is part of the story told in Forging Resilience, the first film in the series. The HBCU experience remains significant, as these schools continue to produce more African American PhDs in science and mathematics than all other universities in the United States.
Virginia K. Newell was born in 1918. At age 103, she covered huge swaths of history: how she got interested in mathematics as a child, her exposure to good teachers, and the attitudes that produced obstructions to the education of Black students.
There is an ephemeral, aesthetic side to mathematics that, in conjunction with its pragmatic qualities, stimulates people to look for new truths. Seeing beauty, discovering new ideas, and attaining a proof are experiences that inspire mathematicians. Several of them describe their devotion to mathematics in reverent terms.
Working with postdocs and graduate students, in addition to high school and younger students, involved filming at several well-established programs, as well as documenting some new initiatives as these are introduced. The programs filmed between 2021 and 2024 include the following.
In a partnership with mathematicians from UCLA, teachers at Horace Mann UCLA Community School in Los Angeles launched an innovative program in which students created posters of pioneers in mathematics and science after researching their lives and accomplishments. The project conceived by UCLA mathematics professor Wilfrid Gangbo, postdoc Matthew Jacobs, and Tatiana Toro, then a mathematics professor at the University of Washington, soon had input from Edray Goins of Pomona College and Kyndall Brown, executive director, California Mathematics Project Statewide Office, UCLA. Some phases of the project, called K-12 Students Poster Design Challenge to Promote Pioneers in Mathematics, were filmed in May 2022.
The MSRI Undergraduate Program (MSRI-UP) is a comprehensive summer program designed for undergraduate students who have completed two years of university-level mathematics courses and would like to conduct research in the mathematical sciences. The main objective of MSRI-UP is to identify talented students, especially those from underrepresented groups, who are interested in mathematics and make available to them meaningful research opportunities, the necessary skills and knowledge to participate in successful collaborations, and a community of academic peers and mentors who can advise, encourage, and support them through a successful graduate program.
MSRI-UP is designed to contribute significantly to increasing the number of graduate degrees in the mathematical sciences, especially by cultivating heretofore untapped mathematical talent within the US Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American communities.
Several of the students tracked through one or both of the films were MSRI-UP participants, including Elijah Leake, Kobe Lawson-Chavanu, and Alexis Edozie.
NAM’s Undergraduate MATHFest is an annual three-day meeting, typically Friday through Sunday in the fall, which rotates around the country based on NAM’s regional structure. Geared toward undergraduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the conference is designed to encourage students to pursue advanced degrees in mathematics and mathematics education.
ADJOINT is a yearlong program that provides opportunities for US mathematicians—especially those from the African Diaspora—to form collaborations with distinguished African American research leaders on topics at the forefront of mathematical and statistical research. Beginning with an intensive two-week summer session at SLMath, participants work in small groups under the guidance of some of the nation’s foremost mathematicians and statisticians to expand their research portfolios into new areas. Naiomi Cameron, chair of mathematics at Spelman College, and Keisha Cook from Clemson University were both participants in the ADJOINT meetings filmed in 2022.
Production on Journeys of Black Mathematicians (JBM) began in mid-2020. The first interview took place in September 2020, with Scott Williams, filmed in Erie, Pennsylvania. Due to restraints on travel and physical contact, especially with elderly persons who were more vulnerable to the epidemic prior to the availability of the Covid vaccines, the next two interviews were filmed with only a local cameraman present with the subject and the producer and cinematographer participating remotely via internet connection. Dr. Virginia Newell, age 103, was interviewed at her home in North Carolina in December 2020 this way.
The second remote interview was conducted in March 2021 with Dr. Evelyn Granville at her home in Washington, DC. An interview with Dr. Emille D. Lawrence, chair of mathematics at the University of San Francisco, was conducted live at her home in San Francisco in April 2021. Two subsequent shoots with Dr. Lawrence took place in San Francisco and Alameda. Professor Edray Goins was interviewed at his office at Pomona College in Claremont in June 2021. In an eight-day shoot in October 2021 in the Atlanta area, we were able to interview 10 people and film on the grounds of two HBCUs, Spelman and Morehouse. A November 2021 interview with Dr. Omayra Ortega of Sonoma State University was shot at MSRI in Berkeley.
Due to Covid restrictions, almost all filming with students at every level was pushed to 2022 and 2023, pending access to schools and programs. In late 2022, our concentration finally shifted from filming individual interviews to covering workshops, classrooms, and people working together in other interactive settings.
The first film, Journeys of Black Mathematicians, Part I: Forging Resilience, was premiered at the Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM) in San Francisco on January 6, 2024. Dozens of academic and public screenings have been held throughout the United States, Canada, and in Europe since then, with many others scheduled through 2025.
Production on the second film and proposed JBM biography series continued through July 2024, with shoots in Berkeley at SLMath; Elk Grove, California; Elizabeth City and Raleigh, North Carolina; Boston, Worcester, and Amherst, Massachusetts; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and NIST in Maryland.
Journeys of Black Mathematicians, Part II: Creating Pathways premieres at JMM 2025 in Seattle on January 11, 2025. Distribution plans for both films include the general and educational release for streaming and download.
Both films will be available on a single DVD to be released in January 2025.
Television
The television premiere of Forging Resilience was on September 6, 2024, when the film aired on Maryland Public Television as part of its HBCU Week series.
Nationwide broadcasts of both Forging Resilience and Creating Pathways are scheduled by American Public Television (APT) for launch in February 2025, Black History Month. Public television stations will program the two films through 2029.
Other outputs and screenings
Evelyn Boyd Granville, the second Black woman to earn a PhD in mathematics, died in June 2023 at the age of 99. She was one of the first three people interviewed for the project. During July 2023, we edited a memorial video consisting of selected scenes from the 2021 interview conducted with Granville. This video was screened as part of tributes to Granville at NAM’s MATHFest in September 2023 and at other venues since then.
The memorial video is a prototype for the stand-alone biographical sketches of the more than 90 people interviewed so far for the Journeys of Black Mathematicians project. With over 280 hours already filmed, the creation of individual portraits of varying length for a web-based platform will become a valuable archive for showcasing the lives and accomplishments of African American mathematicians. Plans for editing these videos and hosting the web-based biography series as part of NAM’s archival collection are in development.
The films were produced and directed by George Csicsery (zalafilms.com) with major support organized by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), now the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath). Generous funding has been provided by:
Research and scripting support were provided by Albert Lewis of the Educational Advancement Foundation and by SLMath. Project consultants include Sylvia Bozeman, Duane Cooper, David Eisenbud, Edray Goins, Johnny L. Houston, Dr. Emille D. Lawrence, and Tatiana Toro.
Noted filmmaker Ashley James was cinematographer on most of the interviews filmed during nearly five years of production. Much of the project was filmed with a three-man crew consisting of Csicsery, James, and filmmaker William McNeill. The films were edited by Tal Skloot.
Much of the music in Forging Resilience was composed by Marcus Shelby, with additional compositions by Alex Lu, and classical pieces by Oswald Russell and Nathaniel Dett. The composer for Creating Pathways was Alex Lu, with a few pieces by Marcus Shelby, Oswald Russell and Nathaniel Dett. Some of the music in each film is from compositions and performances by the students in the film, including Janiah Kyle and Kobe Lawson-Chavanu.
An Advisory Group of African American Mathematicians (AGAAM), chaired by Johnny L. Houston, was formed to recommend African American mathematicians for participation in the project. Dr. Houston, has served as a senior consultant on the project and was instrumental in selecting the participants for interviews in the Atlanta and Baltimore areas and in organizing and scheduling those interviews.
The project actively began in 2020 with producer Csicsery interviewing/videotaping the following mathematicians and students through July 2024:
There are scores of individuals who qualify and have been considered for participation. However, there is a limit to the number of participants who can be selected. For those not selected, AGAAM and Zala Films/SLMath offer their profound apology in advance.
GEORGE PAUL CSICSERY is a writer and has been an independent filmmaker since 1968. He has directed 36 films, many about the lives and work of mathematicians. His best-known documentaries are Secrets of the Surface: The Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani (2020); Navajo Math Circles (2016); Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture (2015); Julia Robinson and Hilbert’s Tenth Problem (2008); Hard Problems: The Road to the World’s Toughest Math Contest (2008); Hungry for Monsters: A Tale from a New Age Witch Hunt (2004); N is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős (1993); and Where the Heart Roams (1987).
In 2009, Csicsery received the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) Communications Award for bringing mathematics to non-mathematical audiences. Between 2017 and 2019, he was a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University.
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